It was an amazing one month at Goa University. In case you are wondering, I went there to attend level O of the Mathematics Training and Talent Search Programme. The schedule was somewhat hectic with a few breaks in between. Classes would start at 9 am and end at 5 pm. The instructors were available even after the class-timings and students and teachers would have breakfast, lunch and dinner together everyday. The programme emphasized independent thinking and was designed to discourage students from looking at the solutions directly without any attempt. There were lectures in logic and foundations, linear algebra, analysis and number theory along with group discussions.The most interesting bit, in my opinion, was the set of students’ seminars. In my case, I decided to talk about how in ordered field , the least upper bound axiom and the greatest lower bound axiom are equivalent.

And of course, we did visit a few places as well. We ended up going to a few churches, beaches, Aguada fort and a few other temples. The focus however was on mathematics. The teaching was amazing! I still remember how Dr Jayanthan motivated the proof of the Chinese Remainder Theory when the option of simply supplying a solution to the system of linear congruences was so simpler.

If there’s one word to describe the programme, it would be “amazing”. Indeed, I had a good time in Goa.